Virginia Ordinance of Secession

To
Repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of
America, by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and
powers granted under said Constitution:

The
people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of
the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the
25th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven
hundred and eight-eight, having declared that the powers granted
them under the said Constitution were derived from the people of
the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should
be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal
Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of
the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern
slaveholding States.

Now,
therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain that
the Ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention, on
the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand
seven hundred and seventy-eight, whereby the Constitution of the
United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General
Assembly of this State, ratifying or adopting amendments to said
Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union
between the State of Virginia and the other States under the
Constitution aforesaid, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of
Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights
of sovereignty which belong to a free and independent State. And
they do further declare that the said Constitution of the United
State of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of
this State.

This
Ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day when ratified
by a majority of the votes of the people of this State, cast at a
poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in
pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.

Done in
Convention, in the city of Richmond, on the seventeenth day of
April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-one, and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth of
Virginia